I know theres a topic about this already out there but this would help me out a lot. Just list what I can do to make a good mep, please.I really want to manage a good MEP, one that all can enjoy. If you need something to look at, please look at the SR-71 MEP and the Naruto Filler MEP. Thank your for all that help.

Zeromega90-Representative of Spekhead Studios and Destroyer of Schools

Just pick a music artist you like and make some rules and requirements like
Video resolution,frame rate, compression, videos per editor, ect...
You don't have to have a whole lot of details but just make sure you have some kind of requirement
or it will turn into another Sailor Earth MEP ^_^

I would also suggest you compress it as much as you can without taking away from the quality. I'm already dreading that with my MEP. I would also try and make flexible deadlines, along with easy technical things that are easlily understood.

2) Tech Prefs.This is mostly a matter of taste but the common ones are:

A) 29.97 FPs

B) 720x480 or 640x480 (Depending on the final video. It is easier to resize down than to go up so if you want the final project to be 720x480, specifiy that)

C) Compressed with Huffyuv or Lagarith (You may also offer uncompressed as a backup)

D) Specify what you DON'T want like subtitles, watermarks, hentai, that sort of thing.

E0 Interlaced or Deinterlaced footage. The universal choice is Deinterlaced. Easy to import into a video editing program and saves you the hassel of trying to Deinterlace the footage yourself. Trust me, it is not fun.

3) Editor List

Use it to keep track of your editors and what they are doing so both the participants and anyone looking to join would know what is being used in terms or songs and anime. It works great when you go to put in the credits since you have all the info at your fingertips so you don't have to page through dozens of posts to find who is doing what. A common way of doing this is like this one from my own project:

Here we have the editors noted clearly in bold with the song title, artist, and anime used all together. One thing you should also do is make a note someway to indicate which tracks are done. I used <<Complete>> here but other have used small gifs or highlighted the line of info in a specific color. The choice is yours.

(note: I copied this style from Project Trinity)

4) The Mix

This only applies if you are making a video to a mix of songs like in SOAD Rebirth Through Insanity. Make sure the mix is in it's final compeled stage before posting it, otherwise, you will be messing up editors who have already started thier segement if you change the portion of the song or the songs it is mixing into. Note: Be sure to link the mix to a reliable source, that way the mix won't get lost. See mentioned MEP for an example. You may also want to cut the song into the desired segments and make them available for download. That way the editors don't have to waste time trying to locate the right point to make the cuts in the audio. And do provide the audio clips in .WAV format. WAVs are the best source to use when editing and it saves time since the editors won't have to convert the audio itself.

4) Footage Quality

Unless you are doing one of those "WTF" videos, the standard is to use high quality DVD footage and to export at as high a quality as possible. Some people may want to use anime that you cannot find on DVD yet so you will have to make the call. I don't see a problem as long as the source material is excellent looking, but stress DVD.

5) Final Encode

You can include this with the techincal specs of the video, just be sure to note that it is not what is being submitted. There are a few choices here. You have a bunch of large lossless video clips sitting on your PC. Depending on the length, each may be upwards of 700+MB. When you export the video, you want to get down to a reasonable size as to not destroy the ORGs upload servers. From experience, it seems you can get a nice 23 min video with clips of about 0:30-1:00 down to about 250MB using XviD. 1 hour videos like the DDR projects and AMV Hell 3 seem to cap at 699MB. These should be a good max and min to shoot for. To make things even smaller, you can putz with h.264 for the export. You'll need someone else to explain it since I don't have much experience.

6) The KEY

CONTACT INFORMATION!!!

Aside from PM, leave other means for your participants to get a hold of you. AIM, MSM, E-Mail. You are not on the org everyday and the forums conk out once in a while so this is a backup means for keeping the communication going.

And be sure not to disappear. Check back as often as you can to be able to answer and questions that your editors may have. If you are going to be absent for like a couple of weeks, post that so we all know that you have not forgotten about the project. Nothing is worse than spending several hours editing a video and finding out that the coordinator has bailed.

Ya know, it really does depend on what you're doing and how good the members are. If you have a rather restrictive idea, EG you made an audio mix and editors can not edit it then you want to keep more detail of what's going on. If your idea is more open, EG any track that fits a theme with no preplanned audio track, then less tracking is required. Ditto with the members, if you have some less experienced people you're going to have to hold their hands while if you have experienced editors you could probably get away with 'Here's the theme. Here's the technical details. Here's the deadline. Let me know when you're done'.

Here's a few basics I've picked up:

1) Make sure it's an idea that will interest you long enough to complete the damned thing. There have been countless MEPs that died because the coordinator lost interest and disappeared.

2) Make sure you know what you're doing. If you have no clue how to put the tracks together once you have them, how to encode the final project, or what you want the MEP to be then it's probably not a good idea to start a MEP. At minimum you should know what the general idea of the MEP is, what FPS, resolution, and compression things should be submitted in, and how to put it all together.

3) Set realistic deadlines. You aren't going to toss together a high quality MEP in a month. On the other hand, you don't want to take a year to toss together something that's basically a low quality gag MEP (unless your name is Skylink). Keep in mind a long deadline is to allow times for betas but that doesn't mean people are going to be editing the entire time. Short deadlines run into problems like 'I'd love to but I have finals coming up so...' so part of a long deadline is just to let people work around their life. Also don't worry if it's two weeks prior to the deadline and no one has submitted anything. Editors are a lazy bunch who seem to enjoy working under pressure.

4) Know who you're working with. Seriously, if someone wants to join the MEP then go download some of their videos. Not every editor is skilled. Even if they are skilled, their style may not fit the MEP. Don't be afraid to tell someone no. This probably is more for the serious MEPs, the joke MEPs can actually benefit from having incompetent twits around. For example, I wish I could have gotten Sammy to do a segment for DTSEM.

5) If you're going to try pushing your MEP into the top 10% then it's probably a good idea to check with the person hosting it first. I imagine it sucks coming back from a con and finding out your bandwidth has been totally hosed. I'm surprised Ileia hasn't killed me for that.

6) Under no conditions should you let Decoy in. I don't care if he promises free blowjobs to every editor in the MEP. Do not let him join. Trust me, you will thank me later for this. Ditto for inthesto.

Last edited by godix on Sun Oct 29, 2006 12:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

godix wrote:Ya know, it really does depend on what you're doing and how good the members are. If you have a rather restrictive idea, EG you made an audio mix and editors can not edit it then you want to keep more detail of what's going on. If your idea is more open, EG any track that fits a theme with no preplanned audio track, then less tracking is required. Ditto with the members, if you have some less experienced people you're going to have to hold their hands while if you have experienced editors you could probably get away with 'Here's the theme. Here's the technical details. Here's the deadline. Let me know when you're done'.

Here's a few basics I've picked up:

1) Make sure it's an idea that will interest you long enough to complete the damned thing. There have been countless MEPs that died because the coordinator lost interest and disappeared.

2) Make sure you know what you're doing. If you have no clue how to put the tracks together once you have them, how to encode the final project, or what you want the MEP to be then it's probably not a good idea to start a MEP. At minimum you should know what the general idea of the MEP is, what FPS, resolution, and compression things should be submitted in, and how to put it all together.

3) Set realistic deadlines. You aren't going to toss together a high quality MEP in a month. On the other hand, you don't want to take a year to toss together something that's basically a low quality gag MEP (unless your name is Skylink). Keep in mind a long deadline is to allow times for betas but that doesn't mean people are going to be editing the entire time. Short deadlines run into problems like 'I'd love to but I have finals coming up so...' so part of a long deadline is just to let people work around their life. Also don't worry if it's two weeks prior to the deadline and no one has submitted anything. Editors are a lazy bunch who seem to enjoy working under pressure.

4) Know who you're working with. Seriously, if someone wants to join the MEP then go download some of their videos. Not every editor is skilled. Even if they are skilled, their style may not fit the MEP. Don't be afraid to tell someone no. This probably is more for the serious MEPs, the joke MEPs can actually benefit from having incompetent twits around. For example, I wish I could have gotten Sammy to do a segment for DTSEM.

5) If you're going to try pushing your MEP into the top 10% then it's probably a good idea to check with the person hosting it first. I imagine it sucks coming back from a con and finding out your bandwidth has been totally hosed. I'm surprised Ileia hasn't killed me for that.